The Political Junkie offers an outside-looking- in view of the US. Each day, we will highlight news and opinion pieces from around the world that are focused on US politics and policy. Agree or disagree with the opinions you will read but take a few minutes to see yourselves as others see you.

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Monday, September 17, 2012

UK: Have angry mobs won?

Mobs in the Middle East, Salman Rushdie's new book, and how progressive Islam fell to the barbarians

Of course I have very deep sympathy for oppressed Muslims everywhere. But that is no excuse for this counter-productive rampage

Once, we could say with some certainty that Islamicist fanatics,
thugs, killers and mind-benders represented a minority and that most
Muslims, quiet and sane were unseen and unheard. Today, I fear it is the
opposite.
Modernist Muslims, amalgams of the West and East,
comfortable with their multiple identities, have no part to play. We are
written out, quashed. By whom? By the barbarians who have taken over
mosques, schools, homes, hearts and minds. And also by Western political
and cultural warriors and agents-provocateurs who derive inordinate
satisfaction from playing and inciting Muslims, zapping away as if
playing an electronic game.

The tawdry, internet film demeaning
and abusing Islam’s Prophet was doing just that, knowingly pressing
buttons. It started circulating around the anniversary of 9/11 and so
deliberately brought up bad memories for Americans and rewound to those
days when Muslims replaced Commies as the force of evil and the fearful
“patriotic wars against terror” took off.

All this is happening as Salman Rushdie brings out a book
about his days in hiding after Ayatollah Khomeini passed a fatwa
calling for his death. You get to understand how the fatwa cruelly stole
years of his life and sense of security. Many of his friends and other
libertarians are up and about chanting hymns about freedom of expression
in his name and having a go at religions and followers.